Alec Spangler, PLA, ASLA Work Samplesalecspangler.com/001_Work.pdf · 2019. 3. 27. · With Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) Max Family Garden, Brooklyn Bridge Park ... the

Work SamplesAlec Spangler, PLA, ASLA(c) [email protected]

Independent & Academic Work

Grayways: Philadelphia to New York........................................................22017–

Atlantic Coast: Brooklyn to Miami.............................................................42016–2017

The Longest Shortcut: Penny White Traveling Fellowship in Siberia........6Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 2011

Drawings ...................................................................................................92008–2017

With Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA)

Max Family Garden, Brooklyn Bridge Park.............................................12Brooklyn, NY, 2012–2016

Connecticut Residence...........................................................................15Warren, CT, 2012–

Forest, 2017 Colored ink on paper, 9” x 11”

2Grayways: Philadelphia to New York2017–

This study tests a framework for design ideation based on moving bodily through a major urban region. It grows out of an ongoing series of one-day, 100-mile bike rides from Philadelphia to Hoboken, NJ, along with subsequent mapping and research.

The Philadelphia-New York corridor of the Northeastern Megalopolis is densely populated, well-traveled, culturally rich, and extensively researched; yet there is no well-established walking or biking route connecting the two city centers. The closest equivalent is a section of the East Coast Greenway, which remains fragmented in key areas because it is superimposed on a landscape designed to prioritize motor vehicles.

The interruptions in continuity and quality of walking and biking routes is particularly severe in the industrial/infrastructural rings surrounding the pedestrian-friendly urban centers of Philadelphia and New York. These outer rings have been the subject of ambitious, high-level plans to create new urban form and ecological systems. But an on-the-ground test of the large-scale walkability and bikeability of the Philadelphia-New York Corridor suggests smaller, more targeted interventions that can be regionally transformative with comparatively small investment.

30-second time lapse photos Philadelphia to Hoboken Ride #2, 2018

3Grayways: Philadelphia to New York 2017–

HIGH

LOW

Connectivity

Impe

rvio

us S

urfa

ce

LOW

HIG

H

Connectivity: Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission Connectivity Score based on density of non-freeway street intersections, 2015

Impervious Surface: National Land Cover Database Impervious Surface, 2011, amended 2014

0miles 2.51 5

CSX & NJ Transit Rail Yards

Hudson Generating

Station(closed)

Container Terminal, Warehouses

HOBOKEN, NJ

MANHATTAN, NYC

BROOKLYN, NYC

QUEENS, NYC

Trucking/Auto & Warehouses

Manufacturing, Warehouses, Shipping, Recycling

Newark Port

Newark Liberty Intl. Airport

Golf Courses

Landfills

Sports ComplexEast Coast Greenway at US-Rt 9, Jersey City, New Jersey Philadelphia to Hoboken Ride #1

4Atlantic Coast: Brooklyn to Miami2016-2017

Following a 2011 project based on riding the full Trans-Siberian Railway and a subsequent solo walking trip across my home state of Pennsylvania, I have become increasingly interested in how forms of travel affect the perception of landscape. In particular, I want to suggest opportunities for narrative and bodily experience in the context of an increasing focus on geographical scales in landscape architecture and contemporary life. In September 2016 I cycled from Brooklyn to Miami with my father and later translated our notes, GPS records and weather data into a book of narrative maps.

Atlantic Coast: Brooklyn to Miami, 2017, Book

GPS and journal records from my ride were combined with base GIS layers and NOAA satellite weather data to map, in time and space, the experience of each day

New York City

Philadelphia

Brooklyn

PENNSYLVANIA

NEW JERSEY

NEW YORK

MIDDLESEX

MERCER

HUNTERDON

MORRIS

MONMOUTH

OCEAN

BURLINGTON

UNION

ESSEX

HUDSON

GATEWAY NATIONAL RECREATION AREA

EDWIN B. FORSYTHE NTL. WILDLIFE

REFUGE

Trenton

Newark

Barnegat

Long Branch

Long Beach

Asbury Park

Sea Girt

Tom’s River

Sandy Hook

1

2

345

6

7

8

9

10

11

Day 1: Brooklyn to BarnegatSaturday, September 3

The thickly-accented hotel owner is reluctant at first to let us take our bikes into the room, but he warms up to us and shows us his funny little European car. Tropical storm warnings are so severe for coastal New Jersey that we doubt we will be able to proceed to Cape May in the morning and worry that it might not even be safe for Jack to pick us up. Jack texts to say Governor Christie has issued a state of emergency for Cape May County. We walk to the Shore Fire Grille down Route 9 for dinner. We set the alarm early, thinking at least we might be able to get some distance in before the storm hits.

Depart from Alec’s apartment, 155 Amity Street, Brooklyn at 7:25am1

Cross Brooklyn Bridge to Downtown 2

Arrive at Pier 11 Seastreak Ferry Terminal: All service to Sandy Hook is cancelled due to concerns over Hurricane Hermine

3

Catch PATH train at Recently completed and controversial Word Trade Center Transportation Hub4

Eat breakfast at a chain bagel place at Newark Penn Station before boarding a NJ Transit North Jersey Coast train to Long Branch

5

Arrive at Long Branch Station, minus one hydration backpack 6

Ride on Ocean Avenue through Asbury Park and other interesting Jersey Coast communities; a strong tailwind results from hurricane conditions in the south but weather remains clear and sunny

7

Eat lunch at Jersey Mike’s sub shop after turning inland at Sea Girt onto Rtes 70 and 358

Pick up first leg of Barnegat Branch Trail; return to Highway 9 from a municipal park where phase 2 of the trail has yet to be built

9

Cross inlet at Oyster Creek Generating Station, then pick up Barnegat Branch Trail again and follow it all the way to Barnegat

10

Arrive at Barnegat Motel11

5 mi 10 mi

Newark Bay

Raritan Bay

New York

Harbor

Barnegat Bay

Sandy Hook Bay

Jamaica BayA

rth

ur K

ill

Raritan Rive

r

Hu

dso

n R

ive

r

Del

a

war

e Riv

er

5Atlantic Coast: Brooklyn to Miami 2016–2017

Day 4-5: Princess Anne to Tangier to White StoneTuesday, September 6; Wednesday, September 7

VIRGINIA

MARYLAND

WORCESTER

LANCASTER

RICHMOND

NORTH UMBERLAND

MATHEWS

GLOUCESTER

KING

& QU

EEN

MIDDLESEX

WESTMORELAND

NO

RT

HA

MP

TO

N

AC

CO

MA

CK

WICOMICO

SOMERSET

DORCHESTER

VIRGINIA

SAINT MARY’S

CALVERT

Crisfield

Reedville

White Stone

Smith Island

Tangier Island

After showering and setting in, we walk across the 10-foot wide lane to the large dining room in a separate building. The family-style dinner, which is included for all guests, is excellent and plentiful. Afterwards we walk all around the island and out to the beach jetty at the southern tip. The town is basically 3 short strips of little buildings on more-or-less dry land with salt marsh in between, plus the elaborate dock and shed constructions in the harbor for the crab men. Because of recent storms much of the island is under at least 6 inches of water, but no one is particularly bothered. Crabs swim underfoot and a goose paddles across someones front yard. Lots of tucked away crevices reveal cats. We read on the porch for a bit and go to bed early. We get up at 6:30 for another very good meal in the dining room a few minutes after 7:00. We meet another tourist, a kind of creepy veteran who talks about Vietnam and sleeping with women on the Marshall Islands while his wife joins some local women across the room for morning hymns. Elizabeth from Princess Anne had told us to check out the stain glass in the Methodist church but we end up walking in on an open-casket funeral. We eat lunch at the Fisherman’s corner and check out the little town museum before catching the 2:00 ferry to Reedville.

Up at 7:00 for breakfast at Booklovers; depart a little after 8:001

Arrive in Crisfield with time to spare for ferry; pick up tickets, make a supply run in the little downtown and eat lunch from Captain’s Carry-Out at a picnic table on the waterfront: maybe the best crab cake sandwich I’ve ever had

2

Arrive at Tangier ferry terminal; passed the Courtney Thomas (mail and supply boat) en route; greeted by a large, grissled former full-time pleasure sailer from Waterloo NY, who advises on points south

3

Check in at Hilda Crockett’s Chesapeake House4

Arrive at ferry terminal deep in the inlet serving Reedville; posh houses on the far banks and many pelicans5

Nameless Jesse Dupont Hwy high-rise bridge over Great Wicomico River ( formerly Tiper’s Bridge)6

Arrive at Rivers Landing Bed and Breakfast in White Stone and get set up in the pool house as arranged; walk to town for dinner at Sandpiper Restaurant

7

1

2

345

6

7

ChincoteagueIsland

Princess Anne ASSATEAGUE

ISLAND NTL SEASHORE

Chesapeake Bay

Pocomoke Sound

Mobjack Bay

Tangier Sound

5 mi 10 mi

Patuxent River

Potomac River

Rappahannock River

York R

iver

Piankatank River

Pocomoke

River

Wic

om

ico

River

Great Wicomic

o R iver

6The Longest Shortcut: Penny White Traveling Fellowship in SiberiaGraduate School of Design, Harvard University, 2011

In 2011 I was awarded the Penny White Traveling Fellowship through the Landscape Department at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to ride the full length of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok. My proposal was to explore the possibilities and challenges involved in perceiving and representing extremely large territories, and was inspired by two precedents related to the railway. The first was an 850 meter-long drawing depicting scenes from the Trans-Siberian line around 1899. Recently restored by the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Great Siberian Route was presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition as one of two mechanized panoramas depicting the newly completed Trans-Siberian line. The second precedent was the recent partnership of Google Maps with Russian Railways to stream video shot through a train window of the entire journey from Moscow to Vladivostok, syncing this with a navigable map interface.

During my own trip, I made extensive notes and sketches, took a photographs, recorded sound, and conversed (imperfectly) with my fellow travelers. After returning I continued my research on the history and theory of mechanized perception and began planning an installation of my own that would embody my experience and ideas concerning the meaningful representation of large spaces.

9

7The Longest Shortcut 2011

I looked for ways to understand the extent of my journey other than conventional mapping, especially those that relate directly to the body and the imagination. I kept a sketchbook and compiled a travelogue of more than 1000 sequential photographs.

8

Inspired by Wolfgang Shivelbusch’s concept of the “machine ensemble,” which describes a form of perception resulting from the collaboration of the human body with a moving vehicle, I built an installation based on a common type of Russian Railways convertible sleeper-seat. The structure, which also functioned as a library of sketches, notes, sound recordings, and academic writing on train travel and perception of landscape, was displayed at the Center for Government and International Studies at Harvard as part of the 2012 exhibition, Travel, Traversal.

The Longest Shortcut 2011

9Drawings2008–2017

Beginning with my MFA thesis work at Purchase College, SUNY in 2007 and 2008, I have pursued an interest in drawing as a projection of narrative into imaginary space. Sesshū Tōyō’s long landscape drawings are a touchstone; these and similar works suggested to me that it is possible to intuitively overlay time, space, and different scales of experience into a single representation.

Working mostly in ink with a single fine brush, the drawings encourage a slow scanning of their pictorial space, as if moving bodily through the imagined landscape. Larger scale drawings actually require moving the body from end to end, making walking both an analogous and literal means of engaging with the image.

The character of the landscape in these drawings, and in an earlier series of paintings, comes from my fascination with marginal landscapes—those between the clearly designed and feral. These intermediate states are positioned in time and/or space: complex edges between different kinds of places or landscapes in the process of realization or decay.

Hardcore History, 2013 Colored ink on paper, 23” x 30”

10

Greens #3, 2017 Colored ink on paper, 29” x 41”

Drawings 2008–2017

11

Alec Spangler. Greens #2, 2015. Coloured ink on paper, 30” x 41”

The mid-1980s to early 90s was a big time for extra dimensions. Superstring theorists proposed an 11-dimensional universe; digital virtual realities had become possible, and popular culture abounded with stories of strange, secret worlds overlaid onto our own. It was also the period in my childhood when I became interested in walking. The kind of walks I liked were mundane and arduous; drawn-out errands in back-country suburbia. I don’t doubt this habit began as a way of playing out my Terry Gilliam-fueled inter-dimensional fantasies. I enjoyed going to the often seen but rarely inhabitedplaces I knew from car windows; medians and edges of industrial parks, places where Stephen King might have said that the boundaries between worlds had grown thin. Had I known the word ‘uncanny’ I’d have been able to describe where I wanted those walks to take me. I only knew them as my version of a magic wardrobe.

1 Wolfgang Schivelbusch. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1986. pp52-53

walk ingnarra t ive

embodimentt ime

drawing

Years later I found out about more analytic methods for such spell-casting. Erwin Straus thought that when walkers become train travellers the phenomenon of space contracts and is systematised. So for those of us used to mechanised forms of living, walking ought to de-systematise. I think this means‘make-into-narrative’. When I read about Straus’s idea of mechanised ‘geographic space’ versus bodily ‘landscape space’ I fully understood what walking means to me.1 Walking is narrative; and narrative is all about embedded worlds.

I’ve spent some time thinking about what the expression of walking is in art and design, even in strategies for living. For me, the answer is that the walking-self creates by telling stories: there is duration and spatial extent. The body has a place in it. Possible outcomes are multiple and simultaneous; there are added dimensions. There is meaning. There is no logical necessity. There is no rightness, because stories don’t have to be right. They just have to be good.

67

On Site review

33: intentional landscapes, inadvertent results

drawing |beingbyalec spangler

Walking and Narrative, 2015 Essay and illustration published in

On Site review 33

Drawings 2008–2017

12Max Family Garden, Brooklyn Bridge ParkBrooklyn, NY, 2012–2016Project Manager, Designer

Previously known as the Tobacco Warehouse, the site of the Max Family Garden is a nineteenth-century warehouse building in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood that has been preserved as a stabilized ruin. A local progressive theater company, St. Ann’s Warehouse, acquired the bulk of the site for the construction of a new performance space and agreed to develop the adjoining 8,000-square-foot walled space as a public garden to be owned and operated by Brooklyn Bridge Park.

With Michael Van Valkenburgh, I developed initial design concepts for the garden and made revisions based on client and community feedback and coordination with Marvel Architects, designers of the new St. Ann’s theater. I oversaw design development, documentation, and construction administration; because of the proximity of the site to the office, I was able to interact directly with contractors almost daily during construction.

The built design is a respite from the dense and growing neighborhood on one side and the expansive and highly active riverfront landscape of Brooklyn Bridge Park on the other. In response to the triangular shape and relatively small size of the space, the pavement is conceived as a meandering field, enabling effective circulation without overly partitioning the site. A planting palette of 24 species blends with the pavement edge and frames views through the openings in the historic structure and to the Brooklyn Bridge overhead. Salvaged curbs and other stone fragments found in adjacent buildings are incorporated as paving and seating elements, providing nodes of small gathering as well as sculptural reminders of the layered history of the site.

13Max Family Garden 2012–2016

Study models and views were crucial for testing initial concepts against the architectural specificity of the site.

Large scale models incorporated inventoried stone pieces to accurately represent available stock of salvage material

Communicating the nuances of the design, including the use of found materials, required a combination of precise documentation and

direct collaboration with contractors.

14Max Family Garden 2012–2016

Planting is designed for richness in all seasons and at all scales. Tree and shrub species must be tolerant of occasional inundation, given the site’s low elevation and proximity to the East River. Photo left: Izabela Riano-Levy; photo upper middle: Lexi Van Valkenburgh

15Connecticut ResidenceWarren, CT, 2012–PresentProject Manager, Designer

For four years at MVVA, I worked with residential clients on their property in northwest corner of Connecticut. The first phase of work was a site design for the area around a new house: 3.5 of a total 75 acres roughly encompassing one small foothill of the southern Berkshires. Most of the former pasture land and second or third growth forest was to be maintained as a natural area. Remnants of the former occupants, including extensive dry laid farm walls, mature trees, and an abandoned orchard, were to be preserved and emphasized. The new entry and house landscape, including a pool and outbuilding, was modeled after an old field meadow with a gradation of woodland plants at its margins.

After the initial phase, for which I completed concept design, documentation, and construction administration under the direction of MVVA Principal Matt Urbanski and Associate Eric Brightman, I continued to work directly with the client on further improvements to the property. Currently, I am working with the owners and local landscape architect Dirk Sabin on the creation of a new pond and leading the development of a stumpery concept—an updated version of an unusual Victorian garden feature incorporating the many salvaged rocks and stumps from site development.

16Connecticut Residence 2012–

Sandstone recovered from the excavation of the house foundation skirts an elliptical black locust deck, echoing several natural rock outcrops.

Iterative studies based on a rough inventory of available stones informed the final in-field placement.

Limited to a modular system, the planting design for the pool house green roof uses a gradient of tray depths and species to achieve a contoured surface with minimal weight.

The pool house, designed by architects Albert, Righter, and Tittmann, features an outdoor shower with an open oculus. Mica schist flagstones extend from the pool terrace to the shower interior, where large joints are planted with species adaptable to this very particular microclimate.

17Alec Spangler, PLA, ASLA(c) [email protected]